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MJ Hibbett & The ValidatorsUK

MJ Hibbett & The Validators have performed live on Radio One, had a Record Of The Year in Rolling Stone, an Album Of The Day
on 6Music, released one of the first ever viral videos, toured the UK and Europe, featured in an Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, and recorded a science fiction rock opera, all while maintaining their complete independence from outside record labels....more

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Martin works in Mark's and Spencers
Sharon stocks up cash dispensers
Mary married a man who hears
Voices in his head
Your mate Brian knocks down buildings
Sean and Sally had six children
I'm ensconced in academia
And you, you're still in bed

But do you remember when we'd go to town
Meet our friends and hang around
And talk about what we'd like to be?
We slowly went our separate ways
Meeting up on holidays
To talk about the way it used to be

Our headmaster's back in prison
Peter plays for the first division
No-one's heard from Fred
Sexy Sadie's put on weight
Michael's working in Kuwait
Billy Jones is dead

And do you remember when we'd go to town
Meet our friends and hang around
And talk about what we'd like to be?
We slowly went our separate ways
Meeting up on holidays
To talk about the way it used to be

You said that you'd be famous and drive a flashy car
I thought that I would be the first man on Mars
But you couldn't pay your insurance and had to sell your guitar
And I'm stuck in the Midlands
I guess I didn't get too far
No I didn't get too far
No I didn't get too far

But do you remember when we'd go to town
Meet our friends and hang around
And talk about what we'd like to be?
We slowly went our separate ways
Meeting up on holidays
To talk about the way it used to be

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: Never Going Back To Aldi's

I left Poly in the '90's when there wasn't any jobs
I signed up for highbrow affluence, that wasn't what I got
Deducting drink from dole money it didn't leave a lot
I had to shop around for bargains, had to shop in certain shops
'Cos after social life and rent
I found my money mostly spent

And so I had to go and shop at Aldi's
Pound-stretchers, Lidls, Costcutters, all them
Four cans of beans for fifteen pence is rarely seen in Mark & Spencers
So off to Aldi's I went

But it turns out ZX Spectrum use gave me a skill for work
And I took up typing audio as a very junior clerk
As my words per minute rate rose so did I up through the grades
Till I earnt a temporary secretary's starting wage
And though you'd hardly call me rich
I had enough cash to say this:

I am never going back to Aldi's
I will never give a penny more to them
I'm gonna pledge my troth to Tesco, Sainsbury's or maybe Waitrose
I will never darken Aldi's door again

And you may ask me why
I prefer to pay a higher price
You see a fridge full of nice things is my equivalent of bling
It's a sign of my progression through my life

And when I say I'm never going back to Aldi's
I mean I'm charting a new course for quality
I'll sail the seas of excellence, I'll count my blessings, not my pence
I'm worth it, I'll fly the flag of me

I'm wearing clothes that won't collapse after one go in the wash
I'm buying records that I like whether they're cool or not
And I'll do the same for books and films, and when it comes to wine
I'll buy a bottle with a cork in that costs four pounds ninety nine
To The Spice Girls I said Yes
But I will never accept Steps

Because I'm never going back to Aldi's
No I'm never going back there again
I've worked for years for what I've got, so don't fob me off with pound shop pop
And don't kid me with brown label literacy, like Harry Potter

I'm never going back to Aldi's ever again

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: The Merchant Ivory Punks

You're very lucky nowadays if you get to see them
Outside of the confines of a fashion musuem
Antique speed and classic glue
All dressed up in a period costume

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing it: very fast indeed, was often the answer.

Track Name: The Other Rush Hour

According to the writers of the TV Guide
It's only just stopped being late last night
And the street lamps can't decide if their shift has ended
There's a parcel that I'm meant to be receiving
Between 7am and 6 o'clock this evening
So I'm up and out at twenty to to the newsagent

I'm waiting for the man in the delivery van

It's cold enough to see your breath
It's the time of day I usually prefer to spend in bed
So I'm surprised to find the High Road is alive with people
Maybe I'm amazed because I'm half awake
But it takes my mind a while to realise that they
Are the early risers who ride in before the office legions

On foot on bike and on the buses
They're rushing an hour before the other hour rushes
In the other rush hour

With paint streaked jeans there's a likely lad
Swinging his sandwiches in a carrier bag
As he strides through to find his fanbase waiting
He's the king among the women of the smoker's laugh
'Cos he reminds them of the good times that they used to have
When they only had themselves to get up in the morning

Getting in to punch the clock
Before my alarm clock's ringing's stopped
The other rush hour

I see a younger me on the top of a bus
Trying to impress girls by reading a book
Even though he'll never speak to the women he'll be working next to
He'll sit on his own when he's eating his lunch
He'll be going straight home when they go to the pub
He's too busy counting down the hours until the next semester

This working class colossus teeters
When he has to actually work with working class people
In the other rush hour

Now, in the corner shop there's a wall of flesh
On the covers of the magazines pretending they're for men
They're the photo's of the jobless actresses afraid and naked
While in the papers immigration and society parties
Mortgage rates and cancer scares and straight bananas
Fill space in the froth of pop and lies and hatred

Page 22 there's a cartoon Chav
A townie, a pikey, to be laughed at
By the other rush hour

As a snotty little sod of 17 years old
I was taken by the arm and very sternly told
That I was never to assume that I was better than other people
You see I'd grown up thinking we were Middle Class
But when I went to Polytechnic I soon found out that
There's a lot more to it than having double glazed bay windows

In the louche lidded eyes of the proper upper classes
I was just another atom in the faceless masses
To the other rush hour

My parcel spent my day off failing to arrive
I finally rang the depot at 5.45
And complained like a PTA chairman in a restaurant
I heard what I was doing and apologised
It was at this very moment that the van arrived
With a driver with a clipboard and a package and my guilty conscience

He said I'm sorry it took so long to turn up
But before he could explain I had to interrupt
And say Yeah, we both got stuck in another Rush Hour

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: Other Bands' Setlists

Any day at load-in time
Like fallen fruits of ROCK you'll find
them strewn across the venue floor
The setlists of the night before

Was this one writ in blood fresh gouged
Or did the drummer's normal biro just run out?
I wonder if the singer's well
And where on earth he learnt to spell?

Other bands' setlists - Pretty Maybe To Pretty
Other bands' setlists - Love You Till I Die
Other bands' setlists - Happy Song
Other bands' setlists - Take It Away
Other bands' setlists - Chorus Twice At End
Other bands' setlists - Don't Forget The Harmonies
Other bands' setlists - On Your Own
Other bands' setlists - Say Something

The moral of the song is this
If you don't want tomorrow's band to take the piss
Even if your stuff's dead good
Always pick your setlist up

Every week in Sunday papers
Some silly sod is bound to say
That the fact that British High Streets
Have the same national chains
Means that all our city centres
Are now utterly the same
It seems that life within the M25
Gives you brand names on the brain

Because they say that City Centres
All look the same
Because our modern city centres
Have been taken over by shopping chains

Lift your mind beyond the signs
Of the franchises and you'll find
That the hills and stone of Sheffield (for instance)
Are no way alike
To Peterborough's bricks and flatness
Or to Truro or to Milton Keynes
Even though they've all got Marks & Spencers
Boots and Body Shop and HMV

Yet you say that City Centres
All look the same
Because our modern city centres
Have been taken over by shopping chains

Go get a book and look
At the city 90 years ago
You'll find it in the Local History section
Of Smiths or Waterstones
The architecture's lasted, the street layout's the same
The weather and geography all remain
Only names on shopfronts
And moustaches have been changed

Yet they say that City Centres
They all look the same
I think it's you that's turning Mental
You've been taken over by shopping chains

And if you think that City Centres
They all look the same
I think it's you that's turning Mental
You've been taken over by shopping chains

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: Leave My Brother Alone

I'm standing on the corner getting beaten up
By the kids from the year above
Finding out that smart remarks
Don't help to mop up blood
And when they've finally tired of this
And they've all gone away
Someone comes and helps me up
And quietly says

Leave my brother alone
Leave my brother alone"

He says "Mark, if I was older
And if I had my bike
I would cycle after them
And challenge them to a fight"
I said "James, don't you worry yourself
It's really quite all right
Sometimes it's enough to know
There's someone on your side who'll say

Leave my brother alone
Leave my brother alone"

Fast-forward fifteen years
And we're talking on the phone
About his stupid bint ex-girlfriend
Who has left him on his own
In the house they bought together
While she's out seeing other men
She's got the nerve to wonder why
They can't still be friends, and I thought

Leave my brother alone
Leave my brother alone

I said "James, if I had a car
And if I could even drive
I'd dash straight up the M69
And give her a piece of my mind"
He said "Mark, don't you worry yourself
It's really quite all right
Sometimes it's enough to know
There's someone on your side who'll say

Leave my brother alone
Leave my brother alone

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: Graffitti On The Cenotaph

There's a wanker wearing army boots
Talking loudly in the pub about how he's great
Because he just got back from London
Where he went to a riot on the first of May
And he thinks that Direct Action
Is robbing a Macdonald's and the shop next door
And he doesn't think Direct Action
Is laying down your life to fight Fascism in a war

Didn't we all have a laugh?
Getting pissed up on cider and putting Graffiti on the Cenotaph

And the tabloids wrapped in the Union Jack
Bellow like a General about Churchill's fate
And the gardeners flaunt their bravery
Standing up before the cameras with 10,000 mates
While in the residential homes and the graveyards
The butchered generation's tippexed out again
Is sixty seconds too much to ask for
To remember the sacrifice of love to conquer hate?

Are you so self-obsessed not to have
A sense of shame and disgust to see graffiti on the cenotaph?

Is a slogan on another placard
More important to you than genocide?
Do you put yourself above
The millions from the class you claim as yours who died
Go on, design another t-shirt against Nazis
And refuse to buy a poppy cos it glorifies war
But is there anything except self-preservation
That you'd believe in enough to be prepared to die for?

It's the heroes of the Working Class
You piss on their graves, putting graffiti on the cenotaph

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: The Primal Rhythms Of The Bolivian Nose Flautist

A seminal season of art-rock extravaganza collides headlong with the South Bank, taking no prisoners. As an experiment in alienation and reappraisal it is a singular success, but fails on many other levels. "Pass the sick bag", whispers General Pinochet, whimsically, as he turns to his neighbour. But she pays him no heed. She is entranced by the Primal Rhythms of the Bolivian Nose Flautist.

"Our intention", proclaims the Head of Entertainments, "is to challenge and bemuse", and the reporter nods her head, looked suitably impressed, but more bemused than otherwise. She stares at his poor quality beard, knowing he sleeps on his head to encourage its growth, when he should be coaxing the hairs with the Primal Rhythms of the Bolivian Nose Flautist.

Somewhere backstage, where the sandwiches are curling for their country, the Queen is searching for booze. "It must be here somewhere", she imagines, but cannot focus her drink antennae, for a strange sound exudes from the theatrical wings, and her eyes defocus as a strange sound sings and she too becomes a victim to the Primal Rhythms of the Bolivian Nose Flautist.

And after the show, when the crowd have left, and the party has been partied and all have departed, all that remains is a haunting sound, filling the auditorium from somewhere quite distant, and a passing bluebottle, having the day of its life, takes an equivalent of a year to stop and listen to the Primal Rhythms of the Bolivian Nose Flautist.

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: Let The Weird Band Win

Let the weird band win in the battle of the bands
Don't let the funk band win it just because they've got more fans
Let's reward imagination, let's applaud their spirit and
Let's let the weird band win in the battle of the bands

You know the ones I mean, they'll have a bloody stupid name
An eclectic range of instruments that none of them can play
And a singer who can't sing, I think it's fairly safe to say
That they're only here because another band has run away

But the songs that they sing
Are about all sorts of things
That no one else has sung about
Or thought about before

Let the weird band win in the battle of the bands
Don't let the blues band win it just because they've got more fans
Let's reward imagination, let's applaud their spirit and
Let's let the weird band win in the battle of the bands

And they're talking to the audience, they're trying to explain
As they stand and sing their hearts out from the island of of the stage
In a set where no two songs will sound in any way the same
They've have found a way to use a plectrum at the same time as a brain

But they're roundly ignored
With sarcastic applause
And the judges will smirk
smile and try to look bored

Because the weird band can't win the battle of the bands
They'll let the punk band win it just because they've got more fans
They wouldn't know imagination if it bit them on the arse
That's why the weird band can't win in the battle of the bands

The enemy's in leather jackets, over denim jackets
Wearing hats of all descriptions and their sun glasses indoors
They started shooting moody glances when a girlfriend started dancing
To our heroes' shambling antics, but she didn't stop because

The songs that they sing
Are about all sorts of things
That no one else has sung about
Or thought about before

And like the first drop of a monsoon something marvellous begins
As all around her other girlfriends start to hear the words they sing
And as the rain falls harder round her and the waters rise up high
It might just be tonight's the night the judges judge the damn thing right

And let the weird band win in the battle of the bands
As the righteous waves wash clean the worlds of other people's fans
And they're applauded for intelligence, imagination and
They let the weird band win in the battle of the bands

The songs that they sing
Are about all sorts of things
And nothing like this has ever happened
To any weird band before

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: Praise The Traffic Warden

Call the police and form a cordon
Let's all praise the traffic warden
They keep our cities safe
If they should clamp you
You really should say "Thank You"
It's your own fault if you left your car too late

Leicester was the first place to have them
With their black and yellow suits
Double Yellow Lines are always on their mind
As they walk by in the smart Doc Marten's boots

Before they came to be the Bobby on the Beat
Was in charge of Traffic Control
But now they catch the crooks while the wardens fill their books
Leaving us all free to Rock and Roll

So, call the police and form a cordon
Let's all praise the traffic warden
They keep our cities safe
If they should clamp you
You really should say "Thank You"
It's your own fault if you left your car too late

It's your own fault if you left your car too late

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Track Name: The Drummer's Lament

Drummers always have to drive
Then go and park the car
All on their own while the rest of the band
Are hanging out in the bar
And when they've finally struggled back
They'll find that all their kit
Is sat in boxes at the front of the stage
Exactly where they left it

Oh sing with me now
A story that's been sent
From the very depths of time
This is the drummers' lament

The drummer has to soundcheck first
And finish packing last
And worse than this, he cannot drink
Because he's driving back
Despite all this he'd never moan
He takes it on the chin
It makes no difference anyway
His microphone's not plugged in

Oh sing with me now
A story that's been sent
From the very depths of time
This is the drummers' lament

A drummer always says to his children
As Ringo said to Zac
"Don't do what it did son, you'll spend your
life sat at the back"

As Caeser said to Cleapotra
Whilst reclining in his tent
"If you bang me bongoes"
"I'll give you the drummer's lament"

All in all it's a bloody good job
That every percussionist
Gets to work out all his anger
By hitting things, hard, with sticks